Shower Sex Is Canceled. Go Take a Sex Bath.

At some point in our sex-having lives, we must all come to the inevitable, however disappointing, realization that shower sex sucks. Many of us reach this realization pretty early on, because the disillusionment typically sets in the first time we ever attempt the awkward dance of having sex with someone under a cascade of falling water in a tiny enclosure that was in no way designed to house that activity. Like road head or hot tub sex, shower sex is the kind of ill-advised sex act you do once to check it off the bucket list — probably in the shared bathroom of your college dorm when your high school girlfriend comes to visit you sometime in the first few weeks of freshman year before you inevitably break up — then never try again. 

But have you tried taking a sex bath?

The sex bath is shower sex plus time and sexual wisdom — shower sex’s mature, sophisticated older cousin. If shower sex happens between sexually inexperienced adolescents in college dorms, sex baths take place between adults in fancy hotel rooms, or at least in a home or apartment that one of you shares with few enough roommates — zero, to be exact — that the tub feels sexy instead of gross. 

Speaking of the tub being gross, I understand my praise of the sex bath will not go over well with a certain army of bath haters who often characterize the act of bathing as “just sitting in a tub of your own filth,” and would likely argue that the only thing more disgusting than sitting in a tub of your own filth is sitting in a tub of your own filth intermingling with someone else’s filth. Guess what? Sex is all about getting your filth in someone else’s filth. Also, performatively hating baths because it’s “like sitting in your own filth” is the hygiene version of hating the word “moist.” It’s a boring, tired take and we all know you don’t actually think it’s that gross. The sex bath isn’t for those people.

It’s important to note that a sex bath needn’t involve actual sexual intercourse. In fact, it shouldn’t, because as we’ve established, having actual sex in water is a scam. The sex bath, rather, is the simple, unadulterated act of taking a bath with a sex partner, and it’s delightful.

“Taking a bath together can thoroughly enhance sex and intimacy for a couple,” says Zachary Zane, a sex advice columnist and sex expert for Promescent. “The focus isn’t on penetration when you’re having an intimate bath together. It’s really more on feeling your partner.“

Indeed, while shower sex prioritizes often poorly lubricated thrusting, the sex bath reflects a mature evolution from a narrow, adolescent understanding of sex as intercourse exclusively. The sex bath acknowledges that sex isn’t all about putting genitals in orifices. As any mature, sex-having adult knows, sometimes the key to good sex is not sex — or not sex according to rigid, intercourse-centric definitions of the term, anyway. Bath sex is an embrace and acknowledgement of the value and appeal of non-penetrative sexual touch. “It’s a great form of foreplay because there’s a lot of making out and touching that can happen in a tub,” says Zane. 

“I think it’s a great way to have more drawn-out foreplay,” echoes Tiana North, a polyamorous educator and activist and co-founder of The Sex Worker Survival Guide. A bath leaves room for “a lot of kissing, heavy petting, and fingering,” says North. “Then you can take it to the bedroom once you two are all warmed up and ready to go.” 

That said, there’s no reason the sex bath has to be limited to a strictly pre-sex activity. “Baths after sex are a fun way to get clean and stay intimate,” adds North. While showering together after sex in a non-penetrative manner is often presented as a shower-sex upgrade for would-be shower-sex enthusiasts who find themselves disappointed by how much shower sex actually sucks, the sex bath once again reigns supreme when it comes to partnered post-sex hygiene. Why? Because a sex bath eliminates the worst part of showering together: the part where you can’t both fit under the shower head and you have to take turns freezing your asses off while the other person gets to bask in the hot water. In a post-sex sex bath, you both get to be immersed in as much water as you want the whole time like a couple of sexy steamed dumplings in a bowl of hot soup. (I’m aware that this particular visual is probably not helping me win any converts from Team Bath Hate. Again, this isn’t for them.)

North adds that taking a post-sex bath can also function as a form of aftercare. Not only does a bath help relax your muscles after any strain they may have endured under your amorous exertions, but taking a bath together also creates an intimate space for partners to reflect on their recent encounter, offering “the perfect moment to verbally check in about each others’ experiences,” says North.

A sex bath can be enjoyed before sex, after sex — hell, you could even take a sex bath instead of sex. You’re an adult; you can do whatever you want, like drink champagne in the tub, which is yet another thing you can’t do during shower sex. You could even fill the tub up with champagne and take a sex bath in that. Just kidding, don’t do that. I don’t know what would happen for sure, but it will probably involve a lot of infections. The point is, there’s no bad time to take a sex bath. There is, however, a bad time to have shower sex, and it’s all the time. When you’re ready to graduate from the adolescent fantasy of shower sex, the sex bath awaits.

You may know Rashida Jones as Ann from Parks and Rec. That is primarily where I know the actress from, anyway, which is part of what has been so confusing to me about Jones’s current role at the center of an ongoing controversy within the sex industry. This controversy has recently been reignited by news of Jones’s latest project, producing the forthcoming sex industry documentary Sell/Buy/Date, but her contentious reputation in the sex work community dates back to at least 2015, when Jones produced the controversial Netflix documentary Hot Girls Wanted.

That film, about teen porn performers, received backlash for careless treatment of the subjects it purported to portray sympathetically. Critics accused Jones of doxxing the film’s subjects, exposing personal information and recycling content without their permission. Despite the backlash, Hot Girls Wanted was followed by a series in 2017, Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On, which quickly drew the same criticism and complaints as its precursor. After the show premiered, multiple porn industry professionals came forward claiming their images had been used in the series without their consent and their personal information exposed, leaving them vulnerable to stalking or being outed as sex workers.

“I didn’t even know that I was in the documentary until a ‘fan’ messaged me telling me they knew my real name and personal information,” Gia Paige, one of the show’s most vocal opponents, told The New Republic‘s Josephine Livingstone. “Do you understand how scary that is? Nobody called me to warn me.”

Meanwhile, Jones’s work documenting the sex industry has also been accused of ultimately promoting an anti-porn agenda by conflating sex work with sex trafficking, reinforcing a dangerous narrative often weaponized in prohibitionist arguments aiming to discredit and/or criminalize sex work. Moreover, sex workers have criticized Jones, who is not a sex industry professional, for even attempting to represent the sex industry in the first place.

Now, despite largely ignoring the criticism and failing to make amends with the community many feel she has exploited, Jones is once again embarking on a project documenting the sex industry. Earlier this month, playwright and performer Sarah Jones announced Sell/Buy/Date, a forthcoming documentary about the sex industry based on her 2016 stage production of the same name, which boasts Rashida Jones as a co-producer. Naturally, the sex work community did not take particularly kindly to this news, with various industry professionals coming forward to slam Jones’s continued refusal to back down in the face of criticism. In a tweet responding to the Sell/Buy/Date news, adult industry life coach Dee Siren accused Rashida Jones of once again “acting like she represents the sex industry,” adding that the producer has “done nothing but cause issues by sensationalizing sex workers & connecting consensual workers with trafficking.”

Meanwhile, Jones isn’t alone. The controversy surrounding her flawed coverage of the sex industry is reflective of what Livingstone calls “a powerful strain of anti–sex work sentiment running through Hollywood’s liberal feminism.” In 2015, Lena Dunham, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep (whose name has also been linked to Sell/Buy/Date) were among a team of high-profile Hollywood women who signed a letter opposing Amnesty International’s proposal for decriminalizing sex work.

As the rise of platforms like OnlyFans makes sex work more visible and accessible, sex worker narratives are becoming increasingly popular in mainstream media. But while increased mainstream representation could be an important step toward destigmatization of sex work, sex workers are understandably wary of whose voices come to the fore to control their narratives.
It turns out ladies with long fingernails unboxing and playing with new iPhones is my sexual preference — something I learned after stumbling across this video and having my first ASMP experience. It’s not porn, per se, but videos like this one — particularly those involving tapping and swishing sounds — gives me a sense of low-grade euphoria. I get chills from the top of my head, down my spine and right through my genitals. 

As a sex researcher, this discovery led me to an obvious question: Does ASMR make people horny? Like, I know it makes me horny, but is this an experience other people are also enjoying in this way? The recent rise of actual ASMR porn — a once niche genre that is beginning to enter the mainstream porn world with projects like Erika Lust’s new production, ASMR: The Sound of Sex — suggests the answer is yes. 

But, again, as a sex researcher, I wasn’t content with that knowledge alone. If ASMR does, in fact, make people horny, that leads us to yet another question: why? So I took a deep dive into ASMR and its connection to our sexual response cycle, because yes, there is one.

What is ASMR?
First of all, you might be wondering the hell ASMR even is. This is not unusual, as even the non-erotic stuff has only recently made it into the mainstream. However, you’ve likely had plenty of experiences with ASMR without even realizing it. ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response.” This may sound fancy, but it’s essentially a sensation of spine tingling and euphoria that people experience when exposed to certain sounds, visuals or physical touch. 

In most cases, ASMR is linked to an audio-visual trigger, like my video of choice where hot women open and tap their long, luxurious nails on freshly minted iPhones. 

Basically, you hear certain soft sounds, (opening packages, whispering, eating certain foods slowly) feel certain types of touch, (a feather run over your skin, light massage) or see certain things (such as shibari rope tying or someone completing a puzzle) and this makes the brain happy, leading to that spine-tingling bliss down your whole body. 

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